Government request to delay family reunification of refugee children refused

The Home Office’s application to stay Judicial Review proceedings on the cases of two clients affected by its policy on transfers of unaccompanied minors from France during the demolition of the Calais camp was refused by the court. Mark Scott and Miri Weingarten of Bhatt Murphy acted for the children.

The government had requested that the cases of these and other children affected by the policy, whose requests to be admitted to the UK were rejected in the course of an ‘accelerated process’ in October 2016, be deferred until after a separate systemic challenge to the policy had been determined.

In his judgment, Judge McCloskey ruled that the children’s cases needed to be decided expeditiously and that their individual rights should not be prejudiced by this challenge.